SPRING 2017 // INSIDE JOURNEY
Off the
tourist
trail
BY JANINE STEPHEN
The southern Mexican state of Chiapas
has changed beyond recognition in just
80 years. When Graham Greene travelled
these steamy parts back in 1938 there was
no easy road to the Mayan ruins wrapped
in jungle in Palenque, or from there to
the mountain town of San Cristobal de
las Casas. In The Lawless Roads, Greene
describes agonising journeys by mule
along mountain trails. He truly suffered;
his travelogue was all melancholy and
brooding and hatred of mules.
Today bus coaches whip along beautiful,
serpentine roads and tourists are more
common in Chiapas than toucans. There
are many, many more people, unnerving
cavalcades of military police and even a
mall or two. But that addictive thrill of
exploration still lies around every bend,
as we discovered while journeying to the
church of San Juan Chamula – famous as
the home of a congregation that practices
a unique blend of pre-conquest Mayan
customs (including sacrifices), shamanism
and Spanish Catholic traditions.
We rode there on horseback – not quite
the mules of Greene’s days, but stubborn
beasts nevertheless. My steed was Grain
of Gold; my partner’s, The Turk. They had
wooden saddles and wild west-style reins
to be held in one hand. And they moved
like treacle. We plodded in heavenly
torpor up a twisting mountain road lined
with pines and small homesteads, sheep
and cornfields. Some homes had black
bows above the front doors, a sign that
someone had died. Our guide told us that
in Mexico the dead are always present.
Part of life, really. And so we clopped
on, there and back again, valley vistas
unfolding in the sun. All of which made it
exceptionally difficult to understand what
Greene had been complaining about.
MAKE MEMORIES FOR LIFE // 1 1